Author Archives

Contact The Cresset

Contact us at the above email address to submit Letters to the Editor or for concerns related to current subscriptions, including address corrections, missed-issue notifications, and all other communications regarding current subscriptions.

More information

Mission Statement

The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

A Publication of:

Why
do the biblical writers talk about idols the way they do? In the Psalms,
Jeremiah, and Habakkuk, a number of similarly worded passages describe idols as
helpless, immobile images that human beings foolishly worship:

The idols of the nations are silver
and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
they have eyes, but do not see;
they have ears, but do not hear,
nor is there any breath in their mouths.
Those who make them become like them,
so do all who trust in them.
(Ps. 135:15-18 ESV)

These familiar phrases end up coloring the way we think about
“idol worship,” so that we picture Israel’s neighbors bowing down to artfully
devised images, trusting in chunks of carved stone or cast bronze for the
necessities of life.

But if we shift our perspective a little, and recall
photographs of ancient statuary in, say, our college history textbooks, we find
ourselves regarding these images differently. They obviously represent
gods—invisible beings to whom people ascribe influence over natural conditions
like fertility and weather. The stone or metal images stand for absent deities.
Contemplating these pieces in our history books, we would no sooner imagine
adherents treating the images themselves as gods than we’d think of people
confusing shrine images with Hindu divinities—or, for that matter, than we
ourselves would confuse a crucifix or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with
Christ or God the Father.

Yet the Old Testament writers insist on deriding the blind,
deaf, and dumb “idols” that their contemporaries worship. Are the writers
simply being obtuse? Are they, in a way, more naive and unsophisticated than
the idolaters they lampoon? Or is their scorn a kind of chauvinism or
unfairness, a willful failure of imagination?

What’s happening here might best be understood as a kind of
elaborate joke. Since in fact, as the writers would contend, no gods exist
“behind” the carefully crafted images, the images themselves remain the sole
objects of worship, and the writers pretend that people trust in them. No
matter how much the faithful or their solemn clergypersons might protest
otherwise, they’re essentially bowing down to their own symbols. In an ironic
charade, the writers play dumb in order to ridicule an empty religious
practice.

The most famous example of such mockery comes, of course, in
1 Kings 18, where Elijah taunts the prophets of Baal. Why won’t their god
“answer by fire,” and consume the offering they’ve prepared? Perhaps, the man
of God sarcastically suggests, the deity they depict and serve is neglecting
their sacrifice because he’s asleep, or away on a journey. Or maybe he’s just
in the bathroom. Even by the Bible’s earthy standards, this last crack is a
surprising bit of low comedy; but any notion of Elijah as an irrepressible
kidder is dashed when he personally executes the 450 prophets of Baal. Humor in
the Bible rarely leaves us laughing very long.

II.
Devices

“Devices” we call them, the cunningly wrought objects we’re
never without. Cradled lovingly, reached for unconsciously, clung to with a
deep and mostly unacknowledged need, they’re at once our symbols of
self-absorption and, increasingly, the locus of our public life. They disrupt
our communion with God, family, friends. They steal our time. They lead us into
temptation. Long before our children text and drive, or discover what sexting
is, or succumb to cyberbullies, we leave them to their devices—like any
Canaanite offering sons and daughters to Molech.

But surely this overstates the case? Doesn’t blaming our
devices amount to fetishizing a wafer of digital circuitry—naively focusing on
the object, as if it were some graven image, while ignoring its intangible yet
real purpose? Our devices exist to bring us data, information. They make
knowledge flow, and deliver us from grinding, time-consuming tasks. They help
us track down our best friends from high school. They help us monitor our
children’s progress in math. They warn us about tornadoes, give directions to
the hotel, channel money to a host of good causes. They even promote, for
millions of users, the free exchange of reflective, insightful opinion. Such
benefits manifest the spirit of the device. Don’t they?

Of course, there’s the dizzying volume of so much
information, and the effects this surfeit has on our forms of attention. For
years, psychological studies and more personal reports have observed our
dwindling ability to concentrate. The confessions of the penitent device user
are becoming a stock essay genre—available most often in digital form. It’s
time to disengage, unplug, get back to nature, say these writers. We’re losing
our wisdom, our humanity, our souls. But no one really means it. If we meant
it, that would mean…well, no one really knows what it would mean.

Then there are the specific evils our devices bring: bogus
information that was once called—when everyone knew and agreed upon what the
phrase meant—“fake news”; instantly available, casually accepted pornography;
character inflation and character assassination, whether the targets are
celebrities or sensitive teens; and sheer corrosive, numbing stupidity, from
incoherent use of language to videos of mindless behavior. To such we yield
ourselves, drifting imperceptibly and sometimes willfully from whatever is
honorable, whatever is lovely, whatever is worthy of praise.

But none of that has anything to do with the devices
themselves, right? Data is content, and content can change. Once we suffer
through these growing pains, the internet will come of age, its true potential
revealed. We’ll experience the real benefits of our devices. The destructive
impulses will wear themselves out, like a thunderstorm or a bad cold. When the Zeitgeist
turns, the people who produce and control content, wakening to their enormous
influence, will make a collective effort toward truth and the common good,
applying the same ingenuity that they now expend on ephemera and profits. Maybe
they just need to see things bottom out. Maybe they just need some prodding
from a concerned public.

Maybe they’re just all in the bathroom.

David Heddendorflives in Ames, Iowa. His literary criticism has appeared
frequently in the Southern Review and Sewanee Review.